Are they watchdogs or foxes. If that's caring for the Economy and Stock
market these POOR GUYS seem to have POOR STANDARDS INDEED! THEY LET THE
RECESSION GO BY THEM in 2008. Says Robert Reich, Clinton insider in an
article at his own website:

"Standard & Poor's downgrade of America's debt couldn't come at
a worse time. The result is likely to be higher borrowing costs for the
government at all levels, and higher interest on your variable-rate mortgage,
your auto loan, your credit card loans, and every other penny you borrow.

Why did S&P do it?

Not because America failed to pay its creditors on time. As you may
have noticed, we avoided a default.

And not because we might fail to pay our bills at the end of 2012 if
tea-party Republicans again hold the nation hostage when their votes will
next be needed to raise the debt ceiling. This is a legitimate worry and
might have been grounds for a downgrade, but it's not S&P's rationale.

S&P has downgraded the U.S. because it doesn't think we're on track
to reduce the nation's debt enough to satisfy S&P -- and we're not
doing it in a way S&P prefers.

Here's what S&P said: "The downgrade reflects our opinion that the
fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently
agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize
the government's medium-term debt dynamics." S&P also blames what it
considers to be weakened "effectiveness, stability, and predictability"
of U.S. policy making and political institutions.

Pardon me for asking, but who gave Standard & Poor's the authority
to tell America how much debt it has to shed, and how?

If we pay our bills, we're a good credit risk. If we don't, or aren't
likely to, we're a bad credit risk. When, how, and by how much we bring
down the long term debt -- or, more accurately, the ratio of debt to GDP
-- is none of S&P's business.

S&P's intrusion into American politics is also ironic because, as
I pointed out recently, much of our current debt is directly or indirectly
due to S&P's failures (along with the failures of the two other major
credit-rating agencies -- Fitch and Moody's) to do their jobs before the
financial meltdown. Until the eve of the collapse S&P gave triple-A
ratings to some of the Street's riskiest packages of mortgage-backed securities
and collateralized debt obligations.

Had S&P done its job and warned investors how much risk Wall Street
was taking on, the housing and debt bubbles wouldn't have become so large
- and their bursts wouldn't have brought down much of the economy. You
and I and other taxpayers wouldn't have had to bail out Wall Street; millions
of Americans would now be working now instead of collecting unemployment
insurance; the government wouldn't have had to inject the economy with
a massive stimulus to save millions of other jobs; and far more tax revenue
would now be pouring into the Treasury from individuals and businesses
doing better than they are now.

In other words, had Standard & Poor done
its job over the last decade, today's budget deficit would be far smaller
and the nation's future debt wouldn't look so menacing.

We'd all be better off had S&P done the job it was supposed to do,
then. We've paid a hefty price for its nonfeasance.

A pity S&P is not even doing its job now. We'll be
paying another hefty price for its malfeasance today.

Robert Reich is the author of
Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This
post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.